Software and content piracy (unauthorized copying) by “hackers” or commercial entities is a major commercial problem worldwide. A substantial portion of the software and digital content actually purchased by consumers is illegally copied, that is it is copied without regard to the copyright rights of the actual owners. Computer software and content typically being distributed on digital media is readily copied. The legal weapons against such illegal copying or piracy are relatively weak and hard to enforce.
Therefore there has developed the field of copy protection, which refers to technology to frustrate such copying rather than to the legal remedies available to copyright owners. A variety of copy protection schemes have been developed over the years generally for digital data and media, and these also apply to computer software. One current software copy protection technique includes a dongle, which is a piece of hardware containing an electronic serial number that must be plugged into the computer to run the protected software. This adds substantial cost for the software publisher. Another method is bus encryption, an encrypted code for use in secure cryptosystems. This is typically only used in high security environments such as for financial transactions. Another technique is a registration key used when running a computer program (software) and required to execute the program (software). It is also known to use code morphing or code obfuscation which hides the execution logic of the protected software code. Most of these copy protection schemes create extra expense for the software vendor or extra trouble for the software user in terms of installation and use.
A typical personal computer copying scheme (program) of the type widely available to hackers and others provides a disk image of the file to be copied. Some of these schemes actually bypass certain known copy protection schemes. Some copy programs are intended for use in the game field, and others in the general computer software field.
Generally there is an ongoing competition between the hackers or pirates who wish to make illegal/unauthorized copies of commercially available software and the software vendors and content providers who wish to prevent such copying by technical means. Therefore there is an ongoing need for new copy protection methods.